I need to make a multiplayer arena for a first person shooter and I need to know which method of choosing an arena is faster. One way would be to have a script that programmatically builds the arena. Another way is to simply switch scenes. Which loads faster and causes the least lag?
It depends. But there are two main factors:
- How much data must be downloaded from the server for your level to be created.
- How much processing time must be spent preparing your level to be rendered a first time.
Procedural levels tend to require less data to download but often take more processing time to initialize. You can normally expect download time to exceed initialization time though.
My approach with several of my games is to define a set of ‘templates’. These are entities are essentially LEGO bricks that I can clone many times and place around my level (think trees, cars, characters, etc). That’s how I did Zombie Pac-Man.
Not sure how many entities but it will be a battlezone-style arena.